Republicans running for governor have a delicate balance to strike: they want to convince voters they’re not too extreme. But as they battle in the GOP primary, they want to assure conservatives that they’re aligned with President Donald Trump.
GOP Congressmen Andy Biggs and David Schweikert are competing in the Republican primary election, along with businessmen Scott Neely and Ken Miceli.
The candidates and MAGA
Biggs certainly has all the hallmarks of a far-right candidate. He’s endorsed by Trump, and backed by Turning Point’s political arm.
Biggs was also endorsed by late activist Charlie Kirk and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ 2022 challenger, Kari Lake.
Although Biggs is a longtime Trump loyalist, he’s tamped down that image of himself somewhat recently.
In a debate facilitated by the Arizona Clean Elections Commission, Biggs went out of his way to highlight bipartisan work and collaborations across the aisle.
He mentioned Trump only twice in the debate and name-dropped a handful of Democrats, independents and moderates he’s worked with to illustrate his ability to cross party lines and court moderate votes.
Biggs also said he’s a “very different” person from Lake, whom he endorsed for governor in 2022.
He noted in the debate and in a conversation with KJZZ that he worked with U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in 2018 on bipartisan legislation called the JACK Act, which requires lobbyists to disclose information about legal issues.
“I have my principles and my values and I adhere to those. But I also know that across the aisle are some ideas that are really good, and if we find a point of agreement, then we work together to get that stuff done. And that's the bottom line,” Biggs said.
The Senate version of that bill was passed into law in 2019.
That’s not always how Biggs operates.
At a Turning Point event on April 17, Biggs mentioned Trump 15 times in 20 minutes, calling him “the greatest president” and pledging to do in Arizona what Trump has in D.C.
As governor, Biggs said he’d share some similarities with former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.
“Yeah, I think in the sense that Governor Ducey was really pro-business, and he wanted just a real structurally balanced budget, but he also wanted to grow our economy. I think he was concerned about education. I think he was concerned about the border, and I felt he was a governor that did a nice job of really putting Arizona's interests first,” Biggs said. “I don't know if we'll be exactly the same, but I do think we worked well together. Let's just put it that way.”
Schweikert has walked the MAGA tightrope for years, not criticizing Trump and saying he maintains a good relationship with the White House, but also skirting Turning Point and not receiving the president’s endorsement.
Schweikert jokes the White House nicknamed him “The Abominable No-Man” because of his frequent opposition to tax proposals.
“I talk to the White House probably more than almost anyone, just because of the chairmanships and the things I do. Trump calls me Dave or Davey, and I don't know if he's doing that just to mess with me. ’Cause on occasion, I'm slightly disharmonious, because I'm the idiot who has the numbers,” Schweikert said.
He claimed he’s brought hundreds of billions of dollars back to the country through his work on tax issues.
“You're not going to run on that, because no one cares or has any idea what the blank you're talking about,” Schweikert said.
Schweikert’s pitch is that he’s the only viable Republican to beat Hobbs because he’s the only candidate who’s proven he can win a competitive race, having done that for seven cycles in a row.
Schweikert lives in Scottsdale and represents Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, which is one of the most competitive in the country.
He was first elected to that office in 2010 and fought off Democratic challenges ever since.
Jevin Hodge came the closest to ousting Schweikert, losing by just eight-tenths of a percentage point in 2022.
Biggs, on the other hand, has served in Congress since 2016, but he’s never had a competitive race against a Democrat. His district in the East Valley, CD5, is very red.
“We've demonstrated a conservative can win in swing districts,” Schweikert said. “I think I now have the Democrats' most expensive loss for the last three cycles. I'm the only urban suburban Republican who won in 2018. They wiped us out all across the country, except for us.”
Neely ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022 and for mayor of Mesa in 2024. He runs Action Concrete Pumping in Mesa.
Miceli is a first-time candidate and runs a Scottsdale-based construction company called Miceli Construction Group.
Biggs’ backstory
Biggs was born in Tucson and is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. He’s a longtime Gilbert resident.
He attended Brigham Young University and became an attorney in 1984.
Biggs worked as a prosecutor and famously won $10 million in the American Family Publishers sweepstakes — made famous by Dick Clark and Ed McMahon — in 1993.
In 2002, he was elected to the Arizona Legislature and served there for nearly a decade, including two terms as Senate president.
He was first elected to Congress in 2016.
There, he led the Congressional Freedom Caucus for three years, which is considered far-right. It’s also the template for the Legislature’s Arizona Freedom Caucus.
In 2020, Biggs voted against certifying multiple states’ election results, including Arizona’s, and said “we don’t know” who won that presidential election.
Biggs denied being involved in organizing the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, disputing claims by a former White House aide and former representative who said Biggs was part of a Jan. 6 planning meeting.
Biggs says his experience at the Legislature and in Congress, as well as the endorsements of several conservative lawmakers and groups, are what make him the right candidate.
“My vision for the state is to restore the American dream to Arizona. That just really resonates. I'm a positive guy, I'm an optimistic guy, but I'm also very pragmatic as well. I actually have written state budgets. I've actually produced budgets that balanced and left a surplus when I left the state to come to Congress. So, not only do I have the policy chops, the procedural chops, I also have this vision and this optimism going forward,” Biggs said.
Schweikert’s backstory
Schweikert was born in California but grew up in Scottsdale. He now lives in Fountain Hills.
Schweikert worked in real estate, but has had many roles in politics.
He was elected to the Arizona Legislature and served two terms there.
Then he was appointed to lead the Arizona State Board of Equalization — an agency that has the authority to settle legal arguments between property owners and the government over how much they owe in property taxes.
Then Schweikert served as chief deputy treasurer of Maricopa County.
Schweikert was first elected to Congress in 2010.
Between 2020 and 2022, he was found guilty of 11 campaign finance and ethics violations. The House Ethics Committee fined Schweikert $50,000 for misusing funds and using staff to work on his campaign.
Schweikert was fined another $125,000 by the Federal Election Commission in 2022 for campaign finance violations.
Along with fellow Republican Paul Gosar, who was also elected to the House in 2010, Schweikert is the longest tenured member of Arizona’s congressional delegation and holds a coveted position on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.
In 2020, Schweikert voted to confirm Arizona’s results, but not Pennsylvania’s.
He was also a member of the Freedom Caucus but left in 2023, telling Punchbowl News at the time that he didn’t want to be associated with a populist group.
Schweikert jumped into the governor's race in September 2025 — several months after Biggs and while another gubernatorial hopeful, Karrin Taylor Robson, was also in the race.
Schweikert told KJZZ at the time that he’d decided to leave Congress because it’s “broken” but that he still has hope for Arizona.
Schweikert didn’t respond to interview requests for this story.
Taxes
Schweikert calls himself a fiscal hawk and is known as the charts guy in Congress. He often gives lengthy presentations about fiscal issues and the need to eliminate federal debt.
Schweikert acknowledges numbers aren’t the most sexy thing for a politician to focus on, but said his expertise is on the issues that matter.
“Turns out complex problems require complex solutions. And if someone's giving you a super simple solution, I promise you, it's absolutely wrong,” Schweikert said.
Biggs said he wants to eliminate the state income tax.
Schweikert said that doesn’t make sense because the income tax is a little less than a third of the budget and he said the state would have to raise property taxes to make up for that revenue loss.
He said the governor’s job is largely to attract new businesses and build up the economy, which will lead to higher wages.
Schweikert said it’s about using land and attracting business — which will stimulate the economy and result in higher wages — not politicians raising the minimum wage.
“We should be seeing much more wage growth, and yet we're now starting to see even some of the companies and organizations and investments we worked so hard to get talking about leaving us, and so you can't just rest on your laurels,” Schweikert said.
Biggs claimed that he can eliminate the income tax without raising any other taxes or having to cut services.
As for how he’ll pay for it, Biggs said he’ll mitigate waste, fraud and abuse in programs like Medicaid, and the money the state will save will backfill the loss of the income tax revenue.
Both Biggs and Schweikert said they want to utilize more state trust land and get revenue from it.
Neely said he wants to eliminate property taxes for seniors and lower taxes on businesses.
Miceli said he’ll eliminate property taxes entirely.
Education
Arizona has universal private school vouchers called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, which are available to all K-12 students.
In a debate last month, Biggs said that he supports expanding the program “fully,” but didn’t explain what that means.
Neely was the first of the candidates to advocate for expanding the program and said he wants to let college-age students use ESA dollars on trade schools and would defund public universities to pay for it.
A large amount of Arizona’s public education funding comes from state land trust revenue, due to a voter-approved referendum known as Proposition 123. Former Gov. Ducey was instrumental in getting it passed in 2016.
Hobbs tried to negotiate an extension of Prop. 123 over the last few years, but she didn’t come to an agreement with GOP lawmakers.
Lawmakers could vote to put a Prop. 123 extension on the ballot without the governor’s support, but it’s expected to be more successful as a joint effort.
Biggs wouldn’t commit to trying to extend Prop. 123 if elected governor.
He said he plans to implement a lot of the GOP legislation Hobbs has vetoed over the last four years.
“She basically vetoed any kind of water management bill. She vetoed dozens of those. She vetoed bills dealing with election integrity, something I think in the neighborhood of 70 of those. She's neglected the Department of Public Safety in Arizona. I wonder if she's ever even visited some of the facilities that are around the state and seen how poor those facilities are,” Biggs said.
Election reform
Biggs pledged his support for an election reform bill Hobbs vetoed, to get faster election results in Arizona by altering the deadlines for early-ballot dropoffs.
Republicans in the state Legislature call it the Florida-style elections bill and said that Arizonans will have more trust in elections if the results come out sooner.
Hobbs and legislative Democrats have been unsupportive of the idea, as they said creating earlier cutoff dates for voters lowers their access to elections.
Miceli said Arizona needs to improve voter identity verification by collecting information on biodata, which would be secured in a confidential database and used to scan people.
He also claimed, without evidence, that “dead people” are voting in Arizona elections.
Neely supports requiring everyone to vote on one day, in person unless they have an excuse, like physical disability, for using a mail-in ballot.
Schweikert didn’t commit to supporting the Florida-style elections legislation and noted that people across the political spectrum enjoy the convenience of mail-in voting.
He called for reform to Arizona’s signature-verification process, noting that signatures can change over time.
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